I just wanted to make a detailed list on why I and many others consider Linux to be better than Windows. I hope to inspire more people to make the at the end of my post I will include some ways to make the transition.
Free as in price and free as in freedom
There will never be a reason to pay for a Linux key to move your taskbar, remove a watermark, or change your wallpaper. Linux is open source, which means the code used to create the software is available for anybody to view and audit. Users are free to do whatever they want with the code and could even create a whole different version if they wanted to. You are also free to customize your desktop environment is much as you want. You don’t get a choice in Windows, the closest thing to a choice in Windows is light or dark and a custom wallpaper if you paid for a key. With Linux You can Configure your desktop environment, your app icons, file manager and terminal till your hearts content, it can be minimal or have all the eye candy you want.
Performance
Put simply Linux has extremely low system requirements compared to Windows and works on a wider range of hardware. If you need a low spec laptop for simple tasks you can rely on older hardware to get the job done with Linux. My 10 year old laptop with a quad core CPU and eight gigs of RAM runs like a champ. Linux is also stable enough to run a vast majority of the worlds servers. It tells you a lot about how great Linux is for servers when Microsoft uses it to run their servers, even though they offer their own server operating system.
The power of the command line
The command line is a way to communicate directly with the operating system to complete tasks. Windows has CMD and PowerShell but you have to switch between them to do certain tasks and in my opinion it’s not as intuitive as Linux. for a beginner the most common thing you will be doing in the command line is Installing software and updating your system which very often can be done with one command. To install software and Windows you must go out to the Internet hoping you’ll find the right link and pray you don’t download malware.
Here’s a link to a Reddit thread talking about a malicious version of OBS That was downloaded from a Google ad from a few years ago.
This problem is almost completely nonexistent for Linux users. Versions of commonly used applications such as steam, Discord, Spotify, Gimp and more are found in repositories and can easily be installed through the terminal. These repositories are monitored and maintained by the community which makes it very difficult for anyone to slip in any malware. If you’re intimidated by the terminal you don’t have to worry, it’s very common for certain versions or distributions to have a graphical version similar to an app store. Once you know what commands you need it makes it very easy when you’re setting up a fresh installation. You put in a long string of commands with all the software you want hit enter and sit back and relax.
Once you get more comfortable with the command line you will find more tasks You can complete with blinding efficiency.
Linux Distributions
Distributions are what we call different flavors of Linux with different package managers and prepackaged desktop environments. There are other branches but Debian, Red Hat and Arch are the main 3 with their own forks or spinoffs.
Debian
- Ubuntu
- Linux Mint
- Elementary OS
Red Hat
- CentOS
- Fedora
- Oracle Linux
Arch
- Manjaro
- Garuda
I would recommend starting with Debian or one of its forks and testing it inside of a virtual machine before committing. There’s a lot of resources out there showing how to get a virtual machine up and running. I will probably do a post about it eventually. Know that you may have defined alternatives to the software you use such as Microsoft Word and Photoshop. When you’re ready to install it on a device directly I made a post on how to create a bootable flash drive —> Here.
I hope this helps.