Name one thing in common with Linux users and Xbox players. Yeah, that’s right, this “<current year> is the year of Linux Desktop/Xbox gets better” talk they seem to want to exist so they can justify using their OS or console of choice.
Like, yeah, I get it, Linux is a thing of all time that exists. People seemingly move to it because it’s better than Windows. Is it though? Maybe. Perhaps. Hard to say.
I have used Linux before and it’s just fine. Just like anything else you’d use for your PC using Windows.
So I decided to do this talk, which is a more generalist sort of discussion, giving some examples to what a Windows end-user would be dealing with if they wanted to swap to Linux.
Better over Windows
The first big thing that Linux has a massive advantage over Windows is the fact that it’s a free and open-source software (or FOSS). Free as in actually free. You can go right now and download it without paying anything extra. And open-source means you can poke its innards and see how it works. The Linux kernel is open so anyone with some coding knowledge can make their own operating system based on it. Amazing stuff, let me tell you.
The second big thing is that everything is very modular and customizable. For someone that like things the way they are, it’s fine, but if you dislike something in Linux, you can tweak it to your liking. If you want to have a new desktop environment, you can. New theme? Internet Browser? Different programs for all sorts of things? You can.
The third big thing is resilience. While Windows has certainly improved in recent years, Linux is so resilient it’s not even funny. Updates can be applied while the system is running and there’s stories of machines having an uptime of 10 years straight. If you mention that to any Windows Server admin, they’ll probably go “How???“.
Linux had ‘stores’ for applications for ages, and it’s usually organized. Everything you need, you can get it pretty easily. Windows got to this idea late and despite being out for about over a decade at this point (it was included in Windows 8), it’s still bad.
No different than Windows
A lot of buzz is said about the Linux Terminal, which is an essential part of the OS. If you want to believe the interface only came to help people to use the terminal in a better way, then so be it (it was probably the reason). But it’s no different than using Windows nowadays. If your system is acting up, you have to run “-sfc scannow” command on CMD or Powershell. There’s another large set of commands you can run to make the experience better on Windows, so the usage here is about the same.
The user experience is also about the same, if you know what you’re looking for. While I personally dislike GNOME desktop environment, using KDE is like if you’re using a bootleg version of Windows. That would sound like a bad thing for some but it can be a good way to take off the training wheels eventually. Almost everything you need you can find with a distro’s default install and if it doesn’t suit you, you can find a different one.
Worse than Windows
This is the part I’ll get people upset.
Windows is a monolithic experience, meaning that only one version of the OS exists (with updates but they don’t change the user experience) and it comes from a single source: Microsoft. Getting it means you’ll get the latest version, or at least one prior. For Linux? Plenty of different distributions are around and they can be very confusing. For someone that wants good or fast, what to recommend? Kali Linux? Clean Linux? Ubuntu? Kubuntu? Arch Linux? Debian? I could go on and on with different names but the point is that each distribution has something new to the table and that can cause some issues.
In addition, installing stuff on Linux it’s either the best thing ever or a complete nightmare. I had problematic installs because my system was missing some library and it didn’t inform me of that. If only it gave me a prompt saying “YOU’RE MISSING THIS LIBRARY, GO GET IT”, troubleshooting would be 5 minutes, not 3 hours.
Drivers are a minor issue but the big problem is having some programs to work correctly. If you use Adobe products, get a Mac or get Windows. Linux is treated as a no-class citizen for Adobe and they couldn’t care less about them. Other similar programs simply don’t exist on Linux, making it hard to make the switch over.
And the last big one, since this is an OS for IBM-compatible PCs (basically PCs in general nowadays), gaming. There was a time that Gaming on Linux was worse than ever, because it often caused more issues and headaches than it solved them, and some games being straight up Windows only. Thankfully, Valve worked to improve things in this world, with Steam working in any operating system for PCs, and with Proton (a compatibility layer), games can work on Linux, although with a bit of a performance deficit, which is to be expected. However many games are still impossible to be played, like some online games, because their anti-cheat solutions will block machines that aren’t Windows, or the developers are incompetent little fuckers that won’t make their AC solution to work with Linux (I’m looking at you Bungie). This means that the list of games that work with Linux is usually in between 50% to 80%. Older titles? Easy game, they’ll work, most likely. Newer ones? That’ll be harder. Multiplayer? Pray that it uses VAC or says on the box that it “works with Linux”.
Why isn’t it bigger?
The big question is ‘why isn’t Linux bigger?’ if it has clear advantages over Windows? Well, the advantages aren’t all that significant IMHO. And of course, the competition is a company with billions of dollars to spend and actively stop Linux to be installed in every machine. This is important because most new prebuilt machines that you can buy come with Windows. And you only find Linux in very small quantities or by system integrators that also make Linux distros, like System76. So… Yeah, it’s not getting any bigger.
You should at least try it
As I said, I have used Linux before, and it’s just fine. If you consider its limitations (no Adobe products, gaming is weird, etc), you might not want to get it, but I urge everyone to give it a shot at some point, because it might work for you. The Steam Deck is 399 USD and it’s the cheapest way to get into Linux and gaming at the same time, because you can get a dock for it and use it as a regular PC, meaning you can have an experience with Linux first-hand. Although I still think that it’s not enough to make the Year of Linux Desktop happen. Maybe we can have the Year of Linux Handheld PC instead?