Who thinks Linux is better??

[Zevulon]

It can run on new hardware, or ancient hardware, or anything in between, really. It's free and open source, bolstering improvements to the OS over time, and drastically improving security.

 

In my experience setting Linux up for a specific task is much easier than on Windows - you can really access and tweak any setting you please. You don't need to do this of course, it's just that you can. Whether you want your user interface to look like MacOS, Windows, run purely CLI programs, or set up your interface in any other way, you can.

 

You can have a prebuilt system stable and working, like Manjaro, Elementary, or PopOS!, or you can build one up from scratch. Likewise, any distro you do choose can be stripped down to something very small, able to be built up from scratch. Update schedules (especially on rolling release distros) are really up to you. Want to update your system, sure go ahead. You can choose between stability, cutting edge, bleeding edge, or you can keep your machine using older versions of software. It'll never force you to update anything.

 

Package management on most Linux distros is a breeze, and much better than downloading exe installers from shady websites. Look at Arch based distros for the best example (in my opinion). One command to update all of the software on the device.

 

Finally, this one doesn't count as a pro, but more of a counter to a con: Hardware and software compatibility is much better than it was 2 or 3 years ago. With the rise of Proton, hundreds of games work with great stability (some even running better than their bare metal Windows counterparts), and it can run a lot of software too. In many cases it's no longer a concern.

 

 

 

[KayX291]

Ever since i've used Linux full time since May 2018 i've noticed lots of differences:

• It is much more lighter on RAM and CPU compared to Windows 10, specially on idle.
• I choose what kind of desktop i want to fit my comfort. On Windows i am stuck with whatever they offer, i'd take KDE Plasma desktop environment any time especially when it offers more useful features than Windows 10 does and if i have an old laptop i can just slap LXQt desktop environment on it and it'll work like a charm.
• In terms of controllers Linux does detects DualShock 4 and supports it, but in conjunction with the game which uses SDL2 (SDL 2.x version) middleware I can use it as an Xbox controller without even requiring a wrapper.
• ETX4 disk format is just faster compared to Windows' NTFS and this does affects loading time in games
• Package manager system is much more simple and safer to use than looking for the EXE file in the internet while being in danger of downloading something dangerous or a bloat, plus it saves more space as the required files to run (dependency) are all located in one directory which every software looks for than just include it with the software separately on Windows which clogs some space.
• In terms of older games it handles much better than Windows itself, including Windows games through Wine/Proton!
• Middlewares which are used to make games or software are generally crossplatform, so it can be used in other systems as well (Which sadly developers don't take the advantage of it)
• The Linux community is much more willing to help than others, especially in bug reporting, these guys write the most detailed bug reports according to other game developers!
• Less shovelware on it, which also makes me find games that interest me much more easily
• You can use Linux in your own way, through text mode, graphical mode, or both. Nobody is forcing you to do something in their way, it respects your decision. Wanna use a graphical package manager? No problem! Wanna update your system later? I'm ok with that!
• Treats you like an idiot, but in posiitve way, any sensitive and system related stuff are locked out and requires you to input the root password to do some modification, if you messed something up which results in your PC not working properly, ya have yourself to blame. Luckily some of these stuff can be done in your Home directory, so if your user setting for it messed up the system, you can just simply delete it and have everything back to normal
• Open source projects, including Linux itself, have their codes sent by users constantly checked in terms of security and performance. If something's bad, it'll get rejected.
• 32 bit games are much more stable from what i've noticed, mainly on Team Fortress 2 since on Windows 10 it would actually crash from time to time, mostly related to reaching the memory limit causing a leak, this never happened on Linux (Perhaps Large Address Awareness is toggled on in every 32 bit software).

[L1Q]

Very flexible, I once resized a root partition on my system because I figured swapping is  slowing down my system and killing ssd, then installed zram and configured it so it can compress up to 32gb into under 8gb. all fits in 16 gb or my ram, and all that was done without rebooting my system.

 

open source can be buggy, sure, but I can restart my display manager together with entire x server and desktop environment, without losing my work progress or running server processes in the background, all because I can work in terminal and even attach to it from remote.

 

Main reason I moved from windows were not spying or performance, it was that I noticed my uptimes went super low on windows 10. I used to have my system running for 3-4 months before I need to reboot it for maintenance with windows 7, w10 introduced super sexy thin window borders and full screen start menu I just could not leave so went to linux and customized it all to my liking, do I need to mention, with linux uptimes are back to multiple months and I don't install updates if I feel like actually being productive?

 

On windows just moving a window requires to either catch it's title bar with cursor or install third party apps like altdrag to have actual productivity. This can be unstable, breaks sometimes and is bloat willingly built over the system just to have the right feel to it. Any sane linux distro let's you drag windows by holding a (alt or any other honestly) key and a mouse button, and that's out of the box, guys.

 

All apps startup and run faster, sometimes significantly faster on linux. Check out this YT video I've seen couple days ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpE2B2QSsa0

 

You can easily run emulators with better performance and mount more file systems than windows can, allowing to have windows as a VM, but it's way worse experience the other way. You showed it's possible to even run mac as a client OS, can you do it on windows? Guessed so

 

Installing apps is magical experience here on Manjaro, I run "yay appname" and most of the time it's somewhere in AUR or main repos, managed by my system's package manager. Super simple to figure out what takes space, clear cache, uninstall, update, etc.

[andful]

For a developer, it is very easy to use Linux.

• C and C++ compiler usually comes pre-installed
• Python interpreter usually comes pre-installed
• Docker on Linux doesn't need a full fledged virtual machine
• ssh client usually comes pre-installed
• everything can be installed with one command

[Bruno C]

I guess I have something different to say. For me it is the organization, easy of use, configurability and tilling windows Managers

 

Most my  computers have high specs and I run linux in all of them. 

 

My particular Linux system configurations are almost all in txt files, and it is easy to change. Extremely organized and easy to change. 

 

Then I can't work without a tilling windows Managers and I have no idea how others do it. 

[ProdigySim]

 

1. No Drivers. With few exceptions, hardware manufacturers add their drivers to the mainline kernel. If it can work, it works out of box.

2. No Ads. In some way or another, Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS all advertise to their users by default. It's gross.

3. I drive a vegan Prius. There are "i run arch btw" memes. But cutting away from that, Linux is the activist's OS for electronic freedom, software patents, privacy, security...

4. Quicker updates. There's never a post-reboot "Finishing installing updates..." phase. You just download updates, install, and reboot when you feel like it. No nags.

5. Commandline UX. This is meaningless to many people, but, after using a linux terminal for a while, you'll never want to touch Window's CLI environment again

 

I'll stop there. There's other things to like but I think they get a lot more personalized from there. Stuff like customization can be a mixed bag of better & worse imo.

 

[ripper253]

Made an account just to contribute to this;

Basically, the big thing I enjoy about using Linux to game/work, is that it puts a lot of control under my fingers, it ends up actually being both the best and worst thing about it, I know that no matter what, if something isn't working, it's usually my fault, and I'm lucky to have the experience to (usually) figure out what's up, latest game not working? probably need to update something, and even then, unless there's been some major change upstream, I know that at worst, the only things that'll have their settings messed with will be the packages that are getting updated, don't have to worry about some weird setting I've never even looked at for six months getting changed on me without me knowing about it.

 

The performance of Linux when doing desktop tasks like editing images in GIMP or vectors in Inkscape is amazing, plus I've gotten very used to cutting video in shotcut and on my Ryzen 2700 it's just overall a quicker experience, once you get into 3D gaming it obviously could be better, I've been using an NVIDIA card for a while though, planning on waiting for AMD's next high-end release and was going to go team red based almost purely on their better support for Linux these days, the ability to pick the exact desktop environment I want is also a big bonus, however it does mean you run into some bugs as unique configurations are just that, unique.

 

If you were asking me to list of some pros/cons in a list though, here I go I guess

 

Pros:

• Full control over every aspect of the system
• Knowing that with most issues someones got my back and I'm usually able to find help from someone knowledgeable quite quickly
• Growing support with the launch of Proton along with a lot of developers releasing games for linux sometimes making games open source, meaning that in certain cases the best unofficial patches can be Linux exclusive
• Sometimes more stable drivers for more baseline hardware(early USB 3 was a big one on my old Sandy Bridge setup)
• Some rather extreme options for hardcore audio stuff (JACK is love, JACK is life), I've also had much better success and latency piping optical audio in from my USB DAC to recording software like OBS than I have on Windows
• The ability to read/write a ton of different formats helps with retro gaming in some instances, HFS (OS X Filesystem) support also used to be a useful feature to have back before the T2 chip was a thing
• Once it's setup you can just leave it and it'll be solid until you need to change something, I used to have a mate who'd setup an Arch Linux system to just open CS:GO and Teamspeak on startup, and just had effectively a CS:GO dedicated console
• Proton and WINE with DXVK is making more Windows games than ever run on Linux!

Cons:

• Full control over every aspect of the system
• Graphics drivers from NVIDIA tend to be Binaries which can be a pain to install depending on if your distro maintainers are staying on top of things
• Knowing that eventually you will probably run into a weird issue you're going to need help with, hence why there's someone who's going to be able to help
• Manufacturer specific programs for controlling peripherals like gaming mice and keyboards are very unlikely to be available or work through WINE/Proton
• Getting audio to switch seamlessly with PulseAudio can be a bit of a headache (have to manually switch the primary output to the HDMI port whenever I plug my Manjaro laptop into the TV)
• Reading/Writing some formats can result in weird performance or even data stability issues in the past (can't confirm if they've all gone away, most seem to have gone, but writing to anything that isn't FAT32 still makes me worried every time from the horror show it has been in the past)
• You'll have to learn and get comfortable with yet another OS, which might be one too many when you've already learned and grokked Windows and OS X, Linux is laid out in a very logical way, but it's still a new way of doing a lot of what you'd consider basic functions yet again
• Proton and WINE with DXVK might be required depending on the games you play, Overwatch through Lutris works great, but it's still not 100% a seamless experience and I would never call perfect, YMMV

There's probably a bunch more/less things depending on who you'd ask, but if there's anything you want me to go into more detail on I'd be more than happy to, these days I tend to game mostly on Linux with Windows as a secondary, just because I spend a lot of my gaming hours playing Digital Combat Simulator which doesn't work in Proton/WINE with all the mods I need to play with these days

Edited October 16, 2019 by ripper253
Clarified my statement about performance

[LoneIgadzra]

1. No bloatware/spyware.
2. Rock solid.
3. Easy to install/free.
4. Do my server development work on the same OS it's going to be deployed to.
5. Bash/zsh and decent shells in general supported natively (not via WSL kludge).

[RSerejo]

I can just install use it, without run to forum or tutorial to optimize system.

and if you need several command lines to install the drive, you're a liar.

And if you can only upgrade a Linux system using command line, you are also a liar.

[Swalkyn]

[deleted]

[Bramimond]

It is terminal centric.

 

Why is that a good thing:

 

Learning the terminal is like learning magic in the sense that the stuff you can do might as well be magic, since it enables you to do so many things effortlessly. But on other operating systems the power of the terminal is always cut short, not just because they are GUI centric, but also because they want to restrict your freedom to do stuff.

[JvPeek]

For me it's a few things:

 

You can customize it all you want. You want your terminal colors to match your wallpaper? Use pywal. You don't want to worry about window placement anymore? i3-gaps! You want your terminal-colors also applied to the RGB-LEDs on your desk? A few lines of scripting, a few HTTP calls to load presets on WLED on an ESP8266 with WS2812: done!

 

For software development you get most of the tools pre-installed or you can install them pretty easily. Gone are the days where you'd have to download and install ten different .exe files in a specific order to get your toolchain up and running. You install everything through your packet manager.

 

Drivers are also a big thing. While i had to install graphics drivers, wifi drivers, ethernet drivers and even audio drivers for windows 10, on the same machine i just installed linux and everything worked.

[PureArtistry]

I'll hopefully let the video speak for itself... (the system typically runs smoother / glitch free and uses significantly less memory when I'm not recording in the background)

 

Linux is just more fun!

[luben93]

I have been using arch Linux since 2013 and my favorite selling points are:

Free as in freedom. 

Free as in free beer. 

Customization. 

Open source (I have actually read up and patched some obscure wifidongel) 

Beeing able to use the same os on my development laptop as the servers that are running my code in the end. 

Low overhead (when I was a poor student I got get some more life out of my old laptop). 

Recently, gaming with proton (I deleted my windows partition for games this summer and have not looked back). 

Techinal freedom (I'm currently dual booting two distros, Fedora and arch, on my work laptop because Fedora is slow and I can't figure out how to make it faster, I just boot in to arch with no default opinions and run bare minimum, and when I want something stable I switch back, I all my work and most of my tools is on a shared partition). 

When troubleshooting I Lear about my computer and how the os actually works. 

Stable. 

[QwertyChouskie]

- Still runs fine on mechanical HDDs, unlike Windows

- Easy repair and recovery, compared to untroubleshootable Windows (personal horror story: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-update/januaryfebruary-security-patches-fail-configuring/ad32c05a-3fed-4d32-9d75-acb734123c1f I SPENT MONTHS ON THAT STUPID ISSUE)

- APT (need I say more?)

- Privacy (need I say more?)

Most importantly:

- With Linux, I can just use my computer, rather than constantly trying to wrest back control from MS.  It seems like Windows is constantly installing junk (I DON'T WANT CANDY CRUSH SODA SAGA, BUBBLE WITCH 3, OR INFINITE TELEMETRY THANK YOU VERY MUCH).

 

When I get home from a long day of work, the last thing I want to do is fight with my computer.  Linux just works.

 

(If you are reading this post and still have to use Windows on a semi-regular basis, check out Tron, it automates removing a decent portion of modern Windows's crap.)

[AlanJenkins]

I love Linux for most of the reasons the others have mentioned but I have not seen these reasons mentioned:

 

• If you happen to be using Windows and it should break you can use Linux to help fix it. An example of this is that I bought a Elgato USB-C hub and the driver that Windows installed near instantly blue screened the OS every time it was loaded. This meant that I couldn't easily uninstall the driver using device manager in Windows but due to the driver name appearing in the bluescreen messages I was able to boot Linux and rename the driver files. Due to this I was able to then plugin the device and uninstall the driver via device manager without the driver being loaded and crashing the OS. So even if you are not a Linux user you can still use Linux to fix other operating systems.
• Linux is also great for data recovery with tools such as ddrescue that is capable of recovering data from failing disks.
• If you ever upgrade your computer or it breaks in some way and you need to replace hardware you can use the same operating system install without any of the driver issues that the other proprietary operating systems get.
• Because Linux is so modular and customisable you can make your computer your own without some update coming along and changing things for the worse.

[Skymage23]

I use it for these reasons:

 

1. The general aesthetic of Linux distros suits me more so than Windows. It is my Gamer Rig RGB.
2.  I like studying OS design, so I love that I can delve into the source code of any part  of my system.
3. I believe that libre software is healthier for the consumer and the non-money-making-yet-also-affected members of society in any make-software-for-me business transactions. That said, I am not as dogmatic as Dr. Stallman. I still use nonfree software where no other alternative suffices and also for gaming.

[Kizune]

1. It works on a wide range of devices - from multi-cpu (i mean WAY more than 2 multicore processors) servers occupying the entire rack to the small Raspberry - and it uses the same set of development tools and the same interface, so you don't have to relearn.

2. It's FREE. You can't compete on the price/performance with something whose price is literally 0. You just can't.

3. Device support. Yes, long time ago it WAS a big issue, i remember myself backporting the Adaptec SCSI controller driver from DOS to Linux kernel 0.99 (yes, i'm that old and yes - i work with Linux for that much time). But now i find more and more cases when for some strange hardware it is easier to find driver for Linux than for Windows 10. Especially for the old or exotic stuff such as 40Gb/s fiber optic controllers - on Windows it is just "PCIe device".

4. Low footprint meaning it is a good thing to run on a low tier hardware plus it is excellent to be a VM host OS.

5. Big variety of file systems supported - including ZFS (and it is a huge deal). It is like having a RAID controller without paying for it.

6. You can do anything (and i mean ANYTHING) from command line meaning remote administration via tiny channel is actually possible. Plus it opens up possibility for a script automation like no other OS does.

[Fatalintent]

Linux does what windont

 

[DemonPoro]

A few mouth ago I switched from win 10 to Manjaro why? I need to do some work wait here we need to update, and spyware.

I got what I wanted. No annoying updates and every update don't brake my audio driver. A few thing I didn't think about when switching but now I think just awesome.

1) all software update in one place with just 1 button press.

2) less ram usage even tho I'm using kde at first it looks that same but I can launch a lot more software without my 10gb of ram filled

3) updates don't brake my stuff

4) options are not becoming more hiden with every update. Try finding audio control panel now in w10 or just you're network connections. Those things was at easy to find place but Microsoft is now hiding everything with there new UI

5) holy Lord of customize you can rly change everything without some strange who know what it do software in ram.

6) I have a few of old 1tb drives I use them for movies and stuff that's not that rly important but when I was using w10 with NTFS fs I was getting 60-100 mb of upload to them I was thinking it's ok they are old. Now I changed them to ext4 and hole crap 200mb. x2 speed...

7) no spyware

no need for antivirus.. well it's like windows don't run exe before check here it's don't run it as root if you don't know what it is.

9)games well yeh it's worse than on windows can't lie. But most of games runs just fine now with proton,wine,dxvk. It's much better than I expected.

10) my old as hell printer/scanner thing that stoped working after windows xp so I had to use VM with win xp now works out of the box, and Bluetooth headphones connects every time like a charm on windows it was like turn them on disconnect Bluetooth connect it, unpair/pair and then maybe they will decide to work. They are a bit on old side but they work and w10 allmost made me throw the away.

Eddit

11) timeshift backups are awesome and don't even close to windows.

[thug_life]

This is all coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't use proprietary software.

1. More freedom (OS doesn't fight the user)
   • Windows doesn't allow the user to turn off certain features/uninstall certain applications (e.g. XBox app) the "default" way (hostile design)
   • Mac OS only has official support for hardware sold by Apple (not to mention the legality of hackintoshing) and is generally very restrictive
2. No licensing fees (especially useful for developers who may want to run another VM on a whim)
3. No/less spying by default since most open source software is developed by people who care about privacy and freedom
   • Also more transparency due to it being open source
4. More choice
   • Different DEs/WMs, some of which follow completely different paradigms, like tiling WMs
   • File systems - good luck getting windows to recognize an encrypted ext4 partition
5. Better package management (you can get software and OS updates from the same place)
   • Windows/Mac "app stores" are still fragmented - you often need download binaries on windows, or use third party utilities like brew on Mac OS for development tools like DB engines or webservers
6. Better OS design, no weird FS/filename quirks like on windows, kernel can be updated without a reboot (ofc you still need to reboot if you want the new kernel to go live, but it's not mandatory - you can keep running the old kernel if you're in the middle of doing something)
7. As a web developer and someone who runs a home server, having the same OS on my desktop, my home server, and the machines I write code for saves a ton of hassle
   • Windows has WSL but it's presumably still more painful for development just straight up running Linux
   • Mac OS is posix compliant AFAIK but it comes with outdated/less featureful command line utilities by default (probably due to the GNU coreutils being GPL)
8. You can choose to install what you actually want after installing Linux, as opposed to uninstalling what you don't want after installing Windows
9. Unlike what some people say, solving problems via Googling is very easy. It is true that it has abysmal market share on the desktop compared to windows, but keep in mind that it is the most used server OS in the world, so you're practically guaranteed to find a solution to any problem that may pop up on a server. And if you don't, you still have the manual or the docs.

[R3P1N5]

One thing that is getting overlooked is Windows 7 EOL in January 2020. Linux is a healthy, free, community-centered alternative to a costly Windows 10 update!

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, R3P1N5 said:

One thing that is getting overlooked is Windows 7 EOL in January 2020. Linux is a healthy, free, community-centered alternative to a costly Windows 10 update!

costly?  it's free

[Gegger]

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

costly?  it's free

perhaps they were referencing the problems that came with michaelsoft binbows 10, or they just didn't understand that you can get a free upgrade

[R3P1N5]

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

costly?  it's free

Not all costs come from your wallet directly. Privacy, time and security, just to name a few additional costs.