Who thinks Linux is better??

[Budjet Tech]

linux is

open source

free

works on IOT, phones, laptop, pc, server, old pc

customizable (see r/unixporn)

so many distros and desktop environments

android

best option for developers

 

just to name a few things

[skywyze]

1. Choice. There are several mainline distros to choose from and each have a multitude of supported desktop environments.

 

2. Usability. Each desktop environment offers its own "way to get things done". This allows me to choose the workflow that is best suited to me.

 

3. Hackability. If there is something about a piece of software I don't like, I can usually find a config file for it and make the changes I want.

 

4. Updates. They happen when I want them to. No random rebooting, no waiting for Windows to complete an update when its stuck at 47%.

 

5. The terminal. I haven't used Microsoft's new terminal yet, but CMD is trash. The Mac terminal is better, but Linux offers a wide variety of terminals and many, many, shells to run inside them.

[jerrac]

Configuration is mostly text files. Which means you can say "Open this text file, search for this line, change it to this." instead of "Find the settings app, find the button that says blah, look for the tab that might say blah or foo, then find the section that looks like this. It might be a third of the way down, but it also might have moved to another tab."

 

Once you get past the learning curve, you are in far more control of your system, which means that when things break, you won't stress out about it as much. You likely will be able to fix it quickly yourself.

 

This is more of a complaint about Windows, but Linux has had solid non-admin account privilege escalation from the start. Which means that when an app needs more privileges, it knows how to handle it well. (I recently tried to run my windows vm using non-admin user. The number of apps that had to ask for admin access all the time was really really annoying. And windows just didn't handle it well.)

 

You can use whatever GUI you want with Linux. Want a tiling window manager? Sure. Clone of OSX? Sure. Windows 98? Yep.

 

Update transparency. If you ever try to check and find out what a Windows update is about, you likely didn't find much helpful With Linux, if you take the time to dig, you can find out exactly what the update is about.

 

[LizzyTrickster]

The wide range of devices that you can install it on. Anything from tiny embedded systems to multi-host server farms.

 

Networking stuff is a lot easier on Linux. No weirdness with it not using a dedicated interface because the metric for the default gateway happened to be lower...

Native VLAN, Bonding/Teaming, bridging support. A lot of distros (i think) ship with some form of the IP Route 2 package, that can configure all this stuff right out of the box.

 

 

Portability is also another huge plus. My old laptop died recently but I've been able to stick it's SSD in a USB enclosure and now I can boot it on any machine that supports UEFI (and it mostly works aside from a few hiccups related to screen brightness).

 

I feel that resources are also more efficiently utilized. I can browse the internet and watch netflix on my laptop without it getting too hot, whereas windows is always running stuff in the background and wasting cpu time.

 

A few others have mentioned about not needing to restart all the time for updates. It allows this because more-or-less everything is either decoupled from the kernel or loosly dependent, I've had systems before that I could update the kernel on and then still not needed to restart until I connected a new device that didn't already have a driver loaded (granted this was with Arch, which unlike other distros doesn't keep old kernels lying about).

 

 

[Nerdom]

On 9/26/2019 at 4:22 PM, James said:

Hey guys! We're doing another "10 Reasons _____ is just Better" video - this time with Linux. Now's your chance to tell us what you love about Linux and/or why Linux is better than MacOS/ Windows.

 

Note: we're not interested in hearing from non-Linux users here
 

 

 

On 9/26/2019 at 4:22 PM, James said:

Hey guys! We're doing another "10 Reasons _____ is just Better" video - this time with Linux. Now's your chance to tell us what you love about Linux and/or why Linux is better than MacOS/ Windows.

 

Note: we're not interested in hearing from non-Linux users here
 

 

Free (obviously)

CUSTOMIZABLE PRINT SCREEN BUILT IN HOW HAS NOBODY THOUGHT OF THIS (on some distros)

Privacy

Apt-get/package managers make life easy

It's a flex to just do everything from terminal

 

[jajo-11]

For me the "killer feature" is the low resource consumption.

 

Additionally:

 

Always up to date packages - updated at one centralized point, the package manager!

 

Better suited for c development (package manager + posix compliance)

 

Offers alternative window managers with tiling support.

[cafe]

linux is obviously better, anyone who doesnt think that is born with a severe low IQ problem.

The only problem is standards and things that sell (mac/windows)

[visitor2015]

My Reasons:

1. Full source code available and changable to indivitual needs (Depends on actual license term).
2. Many choices for distributions.
3. Can work well with older hardware where new Windows versions don't work anymore.
4. Central package management using standard repositories. One central instance keeps all parts of system and user software up to date.
5. Powerful shell that fully allows complete system control using standard POSIX and GNUTools.
6. Most servers on the internet run some sort of Linux.
7. System stability. Can run for years without interruption. Ksplice can also patch kernels at runtime, so no system reboot is required.
8. Fully customizable.
9. Available for many hardware platforms and processor architectures.
10. Many Windows/Mac programs are also available for Linux. No need to relearn anything in that case.

[Boffen]

Doesn't break at random (unlike windows 10).
Makes it easy to customize the OS to your own liking.

Doesn't use a lot of space.
A lot of open source alternatives to programs that are on Windows/Mac.
Built in drivers for my audio interface (Steinberg).
The search function actually works.
No tracking.
Easy to install programs through the terminal.
KVM.
SSH.
 

And it isn't Windows 10.

 

My biggest problems are Nvidia drivers and the games that I can't play.

[jeetelongname]

The Choice is one good thing.You could go from having the most bleeding edge (arch)  packages to being so stable that your computer could be on for years and it will not break on you (debian) There is also more user friendly ones (ubuntu,Mint, etc) server orientated (centos RHEL) and even for the masochists there is gentoo! (in reality it is super configurable and apealing to super speed freaks)

 

the package manager is also somthing that is amazing. its fast centralised and makes managing apps super easy. it also makes setting up a new system super simple as with one command you could have all your apps installed and ready to use

 

customisation is also key as every part of your os can be swaped out for a new part. dont like the look of your desktop switch it. dont like the way a certain login screen works swap it out. so on so forth. its also LESS likley to break everything as these mostly can be swaped without actually having to delete anything.

 

ITS FREE in both a monitary sense and a freedom sense. not only will it not charge you for its use but you can do what you want with it. dont want to update yet? you dont have to. do you want to stylise it to make it look like Hannah Montana threw up on a distro go for it. no one will stop you. Why need windows when you dont have walls?

 

Its respects your privicy. no more digging around the windows registry to make sure that microsoft is tracking you. it is there by default and all data that is sent from the OS is voluntary and can be removed at any time. no ifs no buts.

 

Its inherently more secure as you get most to all of your programs from central sources where all packages have been tested and verified. also due to the nature of open source the programs cannot have malware in them because you can read the code.  Also because Windows is Supermassive most people make Malware for it.

 

its really userfriendly (depending on distro) for somthing like Ubuntu, Pop OS or Manjaro the installer is even better than windows. and it really is not that hard to pick up at all. you dont have to use th terminal if you dont want to (but it is prefered) and there are "appstore like" GUI frontends that make updating, installing and removing applications a couple clicks and its IMO better than the Microsoft store and the Appcenter.

 

The comunity is great and responsive making troubles. less of a trouble. they respond quickly and its normaly a quick fix. Plus the Arch and Debian Wikis are really good resources not only for those distros. they are wide and detailed covering everything from email clients to making a custom kernal.

 

it has less overhead making it faster for older PC's and new PC's alike and updates don't end up killing hardware due to the size of them

 

when the comunity speaks change happens. a case study is Manjaro earlier this year when they wanted to ship free office within the ISO. The community was not happy and they talked about it. this made the developer come to a compromise and actually include an option to install free office ,libre office or no office suite at all. This is all a testiment that deveopers lisien to the community and implemient there feedback.

 

and thats all i can think of

 

 

 

 

[Douplofigure]

Well here are my reasons why I prefer Linux:

• All the tools I need for writing programs are present or easily installed (make, gcc, g++, emacs, man-pages for C libraries, ...). No need to mess around with any environment variables if I just need to compile my program. Usually the argument is that more software is available for Windows, but the programs I use the most are all present on Linux.
• If a library I need for a program is not installed I can install it with a single command (if it is in my distros packet-sources). If it is not there I will most likely be able to just compile it myself.
• A solid terminal with UNIX-pipes along with a selection of very useful tools that do one thing well.
• There is less stuff happening without me knowing about it. I know what programs will be run on boot or in the background and I can easily change this. If a program is running it is because I have told it to. For example: I know my os will not just decide an update has to be installed. It will just open a window in the background and wait for me to notice it. If I decide to install updates, I can do so with a single command.
• Since installing Linux the crash-rate of my computer has significantly decreased, while performance has gone up, mainly because it uses less RAM and CPU.
• I prefer the permission-system for files.
• I was able to chose my desktop-experience. I did not like the included one (gnome 3) so I installed another one (mate).
• There are some comfort features I like. I can for example use the computing performance of my desktop while sitting in bed with my laptop thanks to ssh. Or the ability to have Workspaces on your desktop, virtual monitors.

[SaperPL]

From my experience as ubuntu and debian user what's better in linux vs windows, not sure about mac though:

 

1) when you look for how to do something, you need an app to open file type, you want to customise something/set up your system - in windows you often need to download shady bloatware, at least that's what you'll find when looking for answer. With linux you often get a single command as an answer that will pull something from safe repository and pull it's all required dependencie. Of course complex stuff will require more lines copied and pasted, but you get open source stuff and not shareware, "not for commercial use", time trials and all that crap.

 

2) The way linux is compartmentalised/modular makes it so you really can pick what you need and have snappy system. With windows you can try cutting it down with some 3rd party tools, but who knows when it'll crash because of missing libraries and what will you have to do to recover that missing cut down functionality.

 

3) Great support for old hardware while still enabling you to use current software, features, eyecandy (if you hardware can keep up).

[SenKa]

On 9/28/2019 at 11:20 PM, YellowJersey said:

I haven't worked with DaVinci Resolve. I, for one, find GIMP an incredibly frustrating piece of software to use. So much so that I think it makes more sense to stick with Windows for photo editing. I keep a Windows partition on one of my machines specifically for that purpose.

 

I actually prefer GIMP over Photoshop, so to each their own I guess!

 

I also never got a notification for your reply, so sorry about that

[mjgalindo]

On 9/26/2019 at 11:22 PM, James said:

Hey guys! We're doing another "10 Reasons _____ is just Better" video - this time with Linux. Now's your chance to tell us what you love about Linux and/or why Linux is better than MacOS/ Windows.

 

Note: we're not interested in hearing from non-Linux users here
 

 

There are many more, but the ones most people should be interested in would be:

 

Easy and quick to install (+no infinite prompts for cortana). 

Install software in seconds without using the browser at all (e.g. apt install gimp) 

Efficiency, no clutter, no spying. 

[OwOwhatsthis420]

- Customization

- Freedom: you can do whatever shit you want with your system

- Literally every distro out there respects your privacy more than windows

- Many (very) lightweight distros, so that the system keeps being enjoyable to use on low end hardware

- Big point for me: Open-source mesa drivers for AMD GPUs. Way better OpenGL performance than on windows

- Open-source software in general is being way more important than on Windows

- Stability

- The terminal. I can understand that it's not everybody's thing of using a terminal for a lot of tasks, but for nerds like me, it's perfect.

- No trash update policy

 

I have to say that I still prefer Windows, but only because of the software. Adobe CC, FL Studio (yes, there is LMMS, but it's nowhere near as good as FL), and some games still run considerably better on Windows. If most of my programs get ported or at least get good comparative alternatives, I'll switch instantly.

[Z80Dreams]

For me the biggest reason is very simple, Linux is owned and developed by the users, for the users. You can trust that the system is doing what it claims to be doing. If you know programming you can check every line of code yourself, no secrets here. No hidden data collection, no big brother spying on you. If you don't like a particular feature you are free to fork Linux and rewrite it, or hope that others have already done it.  In Windows or Mac OS X you simply don't know what's going on behind the scenes because you can't review the code.

 

In Linux, even if you are not tech savy you can let other review the code. You can follow discussions on new features. Like the time a new DRM feature was added to the kernel, everyone went bananas over it and it was discussed in every major Linux channel, on YouTube,  on Twitter, in newletters etc. A change like that would go unnoticed in Windows or Mac OS X, but since literarly thousands of people review the Linux source code we could have a good discussion about it.

 

The developers of Linux don't develop it to make money, they develop it to have a neat system for themselves, and they are willing to share it. Microsoft and Apple sell systems to make money, quality is secondary.

[OneCheesyBoi]

i switched to Linux on my laptop about a year ago and my favorite parts about it are:

 

1. Using my computer is way more fun and interesting

if you're technical then this is good but if you don't care you can also ignore it most of the time i just really love getting to know the nitty gritty of how my computer works

2. I feel in control of my computer

nothing happens unless I tell it to happen

3. Super customizable

not just graphically but also functionally. if i don't like the way something works i can usually change it

4. No more dodgy driver downloads

most weird peripherals just work when you plug them and if not then someone has probably written an open source driver for it.

5. Super secure

obviously if you don't practice safe internet usage you aren't 100% secure but just the mentality of getting software from a trusted place via a package manager and the fact that there are just less Linux viruses floating around make it more secure

6. Extremely helpful community

apart form arch memers, which Ive never actually encountered, most people online are more than willing to help you with troubleshooting

[JeanMng]

I use Linux for work (Sciences/bioinformatics) and for web browsing, listening music, writing... (anything except gaming really). I used to work with Ubuntu, I now use Linux Mint and I am very satisfied.

 

For gaming, I am not ready to go full Linux. Although I quite comfortable with the terminal, custom scripts, weird hacks etc. when I come back from work I just want to enjoy it and not tinker for hours. It's not ready for me yet.

 

Mostly everything I do with Linux I could do it with Windows or OS X but it would be way more complicated and more expensive. Some things can only be done with a Unix system though.

 

For me Linux is superior for (in no specific order, not an exhaustive list):

• programming / data analysis:
  • less overhead to install and configure programming languages, text editors and IDEs.
  • command line tools from base Linux (grep, sed, awk, sed) are just awesome, piped with scientific command line tools, it is great
  • Git works best in Linux (the windows GUI is just terrible, plus file management is horrendous)
  • remote execution of scripts on different and multiple machines. It is very handy to work in the command line, then SSH in the lab server, launch some jobs, log out, continue working, go home, come back get the results.
  • some libraries, scientific or not, simply don't exist for windows
  • overall it fives more power to the user (it comes with greater responsability)
  • I haven't used windows in so long for work I wouldn't be able to give more examples to be honest
• it's more customisable and modular: no need to have a bloated windows for a single application computer, or at the opposite we can build complex applications.
• Versioning and containers: so easy to install specific versions of different software, create dockerfile with minimal linux to deploy multiple virtual instances and scale applications.
• Privacy: not being owned by a big American company has its advantage. No constant call back home from windows and from different software
• Software / system updates: one system to install and updates software and libraries is so great. No need to have every software implement their own calls to a remote server for updates (or software staying out of dates for years). No forced design update.
• So easy to use on older hardware

 

[Musrum]

The best thing about Linux is gaming.

 

Launching a multi-platform game requires technical skill and an authentic commitment to the full gaming community.

 

Devs/Publishers who can't or won't do that are almost always deeply flawed in some ways.

 

[MirAshif]

• You tell it what to do. You are in control..

[evo_zorro]

My time to shine. Keep in mind, I'm a long time (over 15 years) linux user, I code for a living, and I've not used windows on any of my machines since windows 7. I've had to use OSX for work for a few months, and quit because of it. That's to say: I may have a slight bias here. Here's some reasons why I think that bias is justified, however:

 

1. It's literally THE MOST IMPORTANT SYSTEM OUT THERE

 

Let's get this out of the way first. Linux is the most important piece of software in the world. End of. Why? Can you say, wihtout any shadow of doubt that there isn't a family on the planet that doesn't own at least 1 device that runs OSX? No you can't. Nor can you make a similar claim about Windows. My house has neither an OSX nor Windows device in it.

Are you an avid windows user? OK, have you got a smart device (whether it be a smart kettle, thermostat, phone), do you have a router? Do you drive a Tesla? Congrats, you probably have a linux device in the mix.

Are you an astronaut on board the ISS? Congrats, the ISS runs linux.

Does your job involve you working with any of the 500 most powerful computers on the planet? I guess your job involves using Linux.

You're online watching youtube video's or reading web pages every so often (or very often)? Congrats. The internet runs on Linux.

A bit more outlandish: Medical imaging software (MRI's, CAT scans, etc...): a lot of the solutions here run linux. Do you drink milk? automated cow milking machines run Linux. 

 

Whatever you can think of, whatever requires a micro-processor and some logic to run on a machine, odds are the system that manufacturers will choose will be the free (both as in beer and as in freedom) kernel that is linux. It's more versatile than Windows or MacOS, it's free, it's tried and tested in every environment (terrestrial and in space),... it's everywhere. Imagining a world without linux implies imaging a world without: 

 

* the internet

* the iss

* home automation

* android (most smartphones, by far)

* routers

* anything bar your Windows PC or mac, basically

 

2. To each their own, to each their distro. 

 

You are a PC user who wants to code? Fine, there's plenty of distro's with bleeding-edge packages just for you. If the mere thought of compiling code makes you recoil in horror, there's just as many (if not more) other distro's out there. 

Do you like arcade games and console emulation? There's a distro just for that.

Do you have a weird obsession with Hanna Montana? Try Hanna Montana Linux. 

Whatever you want, there's probably a distro out there with your name on it.

 

3. It's a Kernel, you decide what it is on top of that

 

If you've been around the linux sphere for longer than a day, you've seen this one before: call it GNU/Linux. Linux is just the Kernel. Windows and OSX users can argue back and forth about which system offers better customisation, the simple fact is: Linux rules supreme here. You don't like Gnome? Try KDE. Don't like that one either? Try XFCE, LXDE, Ratpoison, i3 or SwayWM, Cinnamon, or whatever other graphical environment you find.

The same thing when it comes to something like the command line: you don't like bash scripting? Try csh, or fish, or zsh, or sh, or korn, or...

 

If it's something other than the kernel, you can replace it with something else, and still refer to the end product as "a flavour of linux".

 

4. Bug fixing

 

Remember spectre and meltdown? The system that was first to release a fix for these VERY SERIOUS vulnerabilities was.... Linux, of course. Compare that to Apple's famous `goto fail;` bug, which was reported first back in 2012 (if memory serves me well), and took over 3 years to fix... 

If you're sceptical of this claim, let's be pragmatic about it:

 

AS mentioned before: the internet runs on Linux. Big companies (and that includes microsoft) use Linux (Microsoft is a platinum partner, and contributes to the Linux kernel!). IBM bought Red Hat. They all need Linux to be reliable, safe, and fit their needs. If a massive security vulnerability emerges, you can bet your bottom dollar these companies will fix it. Not in the least because they have to. Because Linux is GPLv2 licensed, this fix is free and open source software in its own right, and we (linux users) all benefit.

 

5. Free software

 

Linux is free. It doesn't cost you anything (although some distro's do), but more importantly: you are free to download, look at, and alter/improve the code. That's how software should work. Imagine you run a company. Software engineers aren't cheap. You pay 10 people to develop some software for you, and a client doesn't like something, or wants a new feature. You have to hire someone to handle customer relations, a project manager to plan any work that comes from customer requests, and pay engineers to maintain, and further develop a piece of code. If you ever reach the point where you have 100 engineers working on a single project, that project has to be making you millions for your company to stay afloat.

Linux has an army of over 15,000 developers contributing to the kernel. No company, even a trillion dollar one like Apple has the resources the Linux community has.

 

6. Hardware suppport

 

It's an old joke, much like the "yes, but can it run Crysis" meme, it's often said that linux has crappy hardware support; it did. Over a decade ago, I remember spending hours and hours trying to get audio or wifi to work. The simple fact of the matter is, however, that in the last 5 years, I've had not a single issue WRT hardware support. I rocked up at an office, I saw the network printer, and printed my documents. Meanwhile, a colleague of mine was trying to get the same printer to work on is OSX machine, to no avail, so I printed his documents, too.

Is Nvidia support bad? Well, their drivers support is probably among the worst for Linux. I am currently running an RTX on my main desktop, running linux though. No problems at all there.

 

On hardware support, there are examples of Linux outperforming Windows. My desktop rig is a Threadripper 2990wx. The Windows scheduler coulnd't handle that many threads, which resulted in lower performance figures. A simple example would be blender (also free and open source). I found this review: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3296378/2nd-gen-threadripper-review-amds-32-core-cpu-is-insanely-fast.html?page=2 showing a BMW render time of 95 seconds (1m35). When I installed Fedora, without tweaking any bios settings, no overclocking, just a clean install of my system, I did the same thing on Linux, to get a render time of 77 seconds (1m17). A whopping 18 seconds (about 20%) faster. Seeing as AMD is pushing towards more cores/threads, and Linux having a lot more experience dealing with more threads (because linux runs most super-computers and servers), it's a more mature kernel. Linux is better suited to handle complex hardware.

 

7. Filesystem support

 

Do you want to copy files over from an NTFS drive? sure, go right ahead. How about mounting a zfs partition? Why not. ext{2,3,4}? Easy.... whatever list of filesystems you can think of, Linux will be able to handle more than Windows and OSX, guaranteed. Same goes for networking. Which system is more frequently used for servers? As mentioned earlier: that'd be Linux. Which system is more suitable for networking? Linux, of course.

 

Now I have to come clean here. FreeBSD (in fact the entire BSD family) are probably just as good, if not better at this than Linux is, and MacOS is based on the BSD kernel. Though I can't point to anything major in particular, I've worked with people who know their stuff better than most anyone I know, and they've described MacOS as a "neutered form of BSD". If someone who knows the TCP/IP stacks of all systems discussed can elaborate on this, I'm more than happy to read through pages of nerdilicious details.

 

8. Update freedom

 

You update the packages you want, when you want to, and you restart when you feel like it. Simple. Deal with it Windows users.

 

9. Community driven

 

Even the major distro's still listen to their userbase more than Microsoft or Apple do. If they make a change (e.g. Cannonical's unity UI, yuck!), they eventually cave in to pressure from its users. If they don't, because of the free nature of the ecosystem, someone will create a fork/spin-off version of their distro (e.g. Mint), and welcome the disgruntled users of old.

This is a trait that can be seen on many levels. When Oracle acquired Sun, who initially created OpenOffice, the community (who rightfully dislikes and distrusts Oracle) decided to switch to LibreOffice. The philosophy of free an open software is, despite the sometimes chaotic discourse and choice-overload, preserved. If you care about personal freedom, you should care about free software, like Linux.

 

10. Developer experience

 

I tried to stay broad for as long as possible, but this is the main reason why I stuck with Linux. If you like programming, in whatever language, Linux just is a developer oriented system. It's built by geeks, for geeks. It's only in the last decade that companies have made an enormous effort to make the system a viable option for the everyday user. I believe it truly is an option for everyone now, and most people stick with Windows for gaming and out of habit. The gaming part, I do admit, is an area where Linux has some catching up to do, and it is making progress at breakneck speed. Much more than Windows is progressing in terms of developer experience, that's for sure (why else would so many devs make the switch to a *NIX system like MacOS?).

 

I've developed in many languages (C, C++, Java, Golang, Rust, JavaScript, Perl, PHP... just to name a few), getting my tooling set up either required no work at all, or was as easy as running a single command like "sudo dnf install php-dev nodejs -y"), and be on my way. From that point on, whenever I checked for system updates, I'd automatically be told if I could/needed to updated my development tools, too. Thinking back to the days where I had to deal with Windows, or brew on MacOS, I genuinely wonder how anyone puts up with it.

 

Lastly, on the development side: containers and virtualisation are industry standard things. Popular tools like docker are built around the linux kernel. You can run docker on MacOS, for example, but what it requires is for MacOS to run a virtual machine running linux behind the scenes. This means: you boot into OSX, just to start a VM running Linux, so you can run a container, thus negating the benefits of containers in terms of system resources.

 

11. Stability

 

Linux is stable. No really, I know Windows got a lot better, but Linux is still better. Not all distro's focus on stability, of course. Some aim for more bleeding edge software, which means sacrificing some stability, but run a home server on Slackware and it will be as reliable as the universe. It'll go on forever.

Even if you're being a complete numpty, and do something silly like accidentally delete the kernel of your OS and reboot, you'll be able to recover (you may have to google a few things if you're not an experienced user, of course).

There's a system update, and something broke? No problem, by default, most distro's will keep a copy of the previous kernel on disk, and at boot time, you'll be able to choose which version of the kernel you want to boot with.

Do you want to roll back an update? No problem

 

 

Right, I wanted to limit myself to 10 things, but the longer I spend typing here, the more things come to mind. I'm going to leave it here, because if I don't I'll be typing for days, and nobody will read it. I'd also get lost in more technical details, the amount of knowledge shared on the LKML, and how accessible core contributers can be...

 

Enough fanboy stuff, I've declared my bias at the start, I'm not ashamed of it, I genuinely believe Linux is the best system for me. If I had to make a list of some cons, I could do that, too:

 

1. Too often you'll hit a skill barrier

 

When you run into problems, and ask people for help, quite often you'll get an answer telling you to paste a few commands in a terminal window. Often this will work, but you've learnt nothing

 

2. It's still a nerdy system

 

Linux, although more user friendly than ever, still expects the user to be eager to get stuck in if you want to get the best possible experience

 

3. fragmented experience

 

Because of the myriad of DE/WM's and GUI API's, some applications have a different look and feel. One that doesn't always match your desktop environment. This makes the overall UI look and feel messy

 

4. Design by Engineer

 

It's a known problem. Engineers design a UX with their code in mind, not your experience. click-through wizards will ask you one question in the beginning, and only allow to further specify that option 5 steps later. If you read the code you can understand why, but as an end user, it can be jarring. A fictitious example: imagine you plugged in a mouse. A wizard pops up telling you your system detected new hardware and asks you whether it's a keyboard or mouse. You say it's a mouse, next, you're asked how many buttons your mouse has, you have left, right and a scroll-wheel. You answer 3,  hoping the next question asks about the function of the buttons. No such luck. The wizard goes on about asking you whether you have/want RGB support, what DPI your mouse supports, and after giving you a slider to set the DPI (in increments of 1), you're asked if the middle mouse button is a scroll wheel. Stuff like this happens, less and less, but it still happens and it's annoying for new users.

 

5. Community seems hostile

 

Now Linux users, like myself, want nothing more than for you to enjoy our favourite OS, but because we've invested years learning our way around the system, issues new users encounter can seem so simple we're likely to answer in a single sentence of tell you to RTFM. This can seem unwelcoming and hostile, I admit. There is, however, a good reason for this: you need to know how to get help from the system you're trying to use. It's part of learning to navigate any OS. Be self-reliant, basically.

 

Passionate people are loud. If you care about something, you want the world to know. You can be very enthusiastic, but an all-caps answer can be read as aggressive.

Old school Linux users have tons of knowledge, but are a bit neck-beardy. Show them you've tied to fix your problem, and they'll happily tell you where you went wrong. Tell them your problem and ask them to fix it, and they'll tell you to have intercourse with yourself. A lot of linux folk still chat on IRC channels, and interact in the way people used to do in the early days, when it was perfectly acceptable for a major website to include a bit in their Q&A along these lines:

 

Q: What if someone was blunt/rude/angry?
A: This is the internet, grow some balls.

 

I'm not making this up, the phrase "grow some balls" was somewhere in the "help" section of the well known site "stackoverflow" until about 5 years ago.

[CPT Gray Wolf]

The best part is 'sudo -i' am the root and the wheel. Nothing is beyond my grasp.

All systems before me shall conform to my will, and my will alone, and nothing, not system nor source shall hinder my command.

 

But seriously, Linux is just better for what I do. I can run the same system on my workstation, and all my servers, and still be able to do everything I want.

I can browse the web, play games, write code, make art, sequence music, and do anything else I might need, all from one system.

 

On top of that, there's no "Windows" issues to deal with.

No wondering if driver "X" is installed and configured properly, I can just use modprobe, or check "/sys".

No buying third party software for what should be simple GUI tweaks. I can add a separate taskbar on my second display, out-of-the-box with cinnamon, and getting two different wallpapers up is a matter of installing the right package and setting it up.

I can add audio loopback channels with a simple command.

I update on my schedule, and my schedule alone, and I can skip or select what to update.

I have fine grained control over every daemon and system process that is, or will be, running on my system.

I have the power of bash and cron on my side.

Only FireFox is eating 40-50% of my RAM...

Even if an update critically breaks something, you rarely have to reinstall just to get things back to running.

No registry, and "everything is a file".

 

Also, if I'm board, I can just start digging through the guts of my OS. I almost always find some new, useful thing I didn't know about beforehand.

 

I'm going to stop myself before I end up writing a 10 page report about this.

If given the choice of any OS, for free, knowing that it would do everything I want, forever. I would still choose Linux.

I know it, it does what I want, it's fun to use, and it costs me nothing.

[JohnnyThunder]

I'm a relatively new Linux User, I had been trying to switch for years but didn't manage to switch until after learning about DXVK from that video you guys did about a year ago.

I would just like to add, that gaming on Linux right now is really fantastic. It seems like games that don't work in steam proton are going from not working, to working poorly, to running with native performance in only a matter of months, it's a very exciting time to be a Linux gamer, just last week I was playing space engineers with pretty bad performance, then just less then a week ago someone figured out how to make space engineers run with native performance, and my FPS tripled pretty much overnight.

It's really exciting to watch this speed of development and it's an experience you would completely miss out on if your on windows right now.

[Commodore256]

As a Linux User, I want to dispel one of the most common talking points.

If anybody says "Linux is freedom", that's a load of bullshit.

I've been using Linux for over a decade and am currently going through the Gentoo Handbook and I'll have to say you're only as free as the least free software you use. I've been burned too many times by black box voodoo magic. Something that Stallman said is really resonating with me. "Either the user controls the software or the software controls the user" if you're dependent on Adobe's central planning and that's why you can't use Linux that's because Adobe is controlling you. You're trusting a centralized platform to keep you dependent on centralization of Microsoft or Apple. If you buy a Talos Workstation and you feel it sucks because it can't run your Linux games, those games are controlling you and keeping you dependent on x86. If you use Discord on Linux, you're dependent on a platform that's spyware and the founder got in trouble for privacy issues and only got big because they bribed Youtubers. Your BIOS is almost certainly spying on you with IME/PSP and even Coreboot uses voodoo magic binary blobs.

Linux isn't freedom, libre software is freedom, it's freedom from dependency on voodoo magic black boxes. I don't like Linux, I like freedom from centralization.

[colonel_mortis]

As a developer, Linux has clear benefits:

• Almost all developer tools are designed for Linux. There are programming languages that don't work on Windows, or that only work with a decent amount of effort within the Linux part of Windows, and there are a lot of tools and scripts that require Linux/MacOS to run.
• Most servers for deploying code are running Linux, so I can learn one set of tooling for my code and use it locally and on the server.
  • Servers run linux because it can be stripped down to contain very little bloat, to dedicate all of the resources to running your code
• Installing new tools, developer or otherwise, is much easier. I just type apt/dnf/etc install <name of software I want>. No need to dig through the website to find an adware-filled installer that I need to download and run.
• Updates are centralised. To update everything on my computer, I just run apt/dnf/etc upgrade. No need for every program to come bundled with its own updater, and prompt me about an update being available every time I open it.
• Updates are fast, and you can use the computer while they install. There's no "configuring Windows" or "we're just setting things up".

I've mostly compared to Windows here, and MacOS does have some of the developer friendly features. Some of them are just a bit less first-class (eg homebrew).