First off, Iām not here to tell you what to do or shame anyone for making different choices. What works for me might not work for you, and thatās totally fine! This blog is just about why I love Linux and why I donāt want to run anything else on my main machine. My opinion comes from my experiences and values, having used all three major operating systems: Linux, Windows, and macOS. Your experiences might be different, and thatās cool!
Ownership
One of the biggest reasons I choose Linux is ownership. I own my operating systemāno terms, no contracts, no companies breathing down my neck trying to squeeze something out of me. When Iām on Linux, I own every part of my machine. I own the hard drive, the CPU, the GPU, the RAMāall of it, including the OS that ties it all together.
Microsoft and Apple, on the other hand, feel like theyāre more interested in getting something from meāwhether itās my data, my money, my attention, or whatever else they can squeeze out. Sure, Windows or macOS might have features that seem appealing, but in my experience, Linux offers something way better: control.
There are fewer and fewer programs that run only on Windows or macOS, so the list of reasons to dual-boot is shrinking fast. For me, thereās no program thatās worth the hassle of using Windows or macOS. Since I went all-in on Linux, Iāve been happier, and I donāt feel like Iām missing out on anything. Canāt say the same for Windows or macOS.
Freedom
With Linux, Iām free to do what I want with my system. Windows and macOS lock you into one environment and only let you customize things as much as the developers allow. Linux? There are so many desktop environments itāll make your head spin. Sure, it can be overwhelming at first, but I love being able to pick any environment, tinker with it, and make it my own.
For example, I love how Qtile workspaces operate, but Hyprland doesnāt work the same way. No problem! I wrote a bash script to make the workspaces function like Qtile. If something doesnāt work the way I want, I have the freedom to change it, and thatās empowering. Thereās no one telling me what I canāt do.
Open Source
Not everything needs to be open source, but the open-source community is full of saints. Look at what people have builtātake Neovim, for example. Itās amazing, free, and you can do anything you want with it. No strings attached.
Of course, thereās always a downside to the internet: trolls and haters. Sometimes itās heartbreaking to see people trashing open-source projects when the contributors are working out of pure passion. These people deserve way more patience and kindness. Honestly, I think the world would be better off if people stopped blowing money on the latest Apple gadget they donāt need and instead donated that money to an open-source project they love and use regularly.
Morals
This ties into open source. Consumerism, in my view, is corroding peopleās values and lives. GNU/Linux represents the opposite of that. I love seeing people work on what theyāre passionate about, and if their work impacts enough lives, people give back, lifting each other up.
That said, itās not all sunshine and rainbows. Thereās real pain and sacrifice behind a lot of these beautiful open-source projects. I respect the people who pour their hearts into making something great for others. I want to be part of a future where technology and nature coexist, not one where tech replaces or destroys everything. And yeah, companies like Microsoft and Apple will rake in millions, even if itās on the backs of child labor or morally grey practices. Anything for that bigger buck.
With Linux, GNU, and FOSS, I donāt feel like Iām being taken advantage of. Theyāre not trying to steal my data, train AI models on my usage patterns, or get me addicted to a product that could be hurting me in the long run. I just want to be surrounded by good people who care about one another. Sure, Linux has its elitists who shout "RTFM" at you, but donāt sweat them. Iāve found the overwhelming majority of the community to be humble and helpful, with only a few toxic corners here and there.
Conclusion
And thatās why Linux is the only operating system on my personal machine. Anything I sacrifice from Windows or macOS is worth it to me. Linux gives me peace of mind and aligns with my values. If youāve made it to the end of this blogākudos, and thank you so much for reading!
If you enjoyed this post and are looking for a non-toxic community of like-minded people, Iād love for you to join my Discord server! Weāve got a great mix of beginners and veterans who love to code, tinker, and build things. Sometimes, I even post polls to help name my blog posts! Come join us, and letās build something awesome together.
Top comments (76)
Was into Linux a lot at the beginning of 2000s, made my own distro from scratch, but usability and user-friendliness were quite low that time, so of course you need to be a pro to use any Unix system. Donāt appreciate Windows at all, now is only MacOS.
macos is slow and bloated just like windows, but at least windows can run on hardware that you build part by part, unlike apple's walled garden so imo macos is way worse... personally I'm in team Linux
YES! Preach! XD
Yeah, I have my gripes with both, but I think Apple makes me more mad than Windows nowadays personally. The OS is pretty good until you've seen the true power of Linux imo.
It's faster, no vendor lockin, less bloat, you can enforce your opinions instead of being beholden to their opinions. M2 doesn't beat a thread ripper ;)
12+ years in team Macos, never seen it being slow, i think your opinion is way biased. I'm good with Linux, no issues, but it doesn't have some very specific software i need, so that's why. At the end it is up to you what team are you, if it suits your tasks, dude
I work on Mac for a living being an Android developer. There's def things you can do to Mac to make it feel less slow. The animations in Mac are seen by many Linux peeps as slow, but you can turn that off and make things feel more snappy for someone who's been using linux for years. I'm running Hyprland tiling manager, which is animations galore and it still feels smoother and more snappy compared to my mac experience with animations.
Other then that, my main machine would blow my mac out of the water when it comes to building an Android project. Even though the M chips are really good, the hardware I've installed on my PC is better. But I understand that comparing desktop to laptop experience isn't fair.
The point being that my main PC with Linux feels a lot better in a lot of different ways. I like doing 3D modeling and game dev as a hobby, and that kind of workflow doesn't hold a candle on any laptop.
But if it suits your needs and you like it, then I think you should be happy with it. If you don't have the same gripes against Apple and their OS's opinions, and you have the money for their brand, then more power too you. :) You have the freedom to choose what you like, and I support your right to love and enjoy Mac and Apple products.
We're just sharing our experience when dealing with both OS's. It differs from yours, and that's life. :) Not trying to convert anybody here, just giving honest accounts of our experiences.
Linux has come a long, long way since then :)
Well, obviously. Itās a proper tool for servers.
For sure, specifically in the desktop experience though. Printers, speakers, microphones, gaming and much more are incredibly strong in the desktop world now. :)
Which Linux version are you referring here? I will also replace my Windows by it
I'm speaking about Linux for desktop generally. I recommend people try out Manjaro if their just starting out! :) Try it in a VM first to familiarize yourself with the process and watch plenty of videos. :)
I would also recommend Zorin OS (which is based on Ubuntu) to anyone migrating from Windows. It can even be customized to look like MacOS. It's what I use btw.
Dang, Zorin has it all! Very cool looking distro. All things included :) Looks beautiful too!
Good choice ā¤ļø
Ty ty šš§
I started out coding on Windows with NotePad++ in the early 2000s. I used to hack the registry to squeeze every bit of performance i could. But got sick of the crashing, rebooting, licensing, and general headaches.
I bought a Linux magazine with a dvd containing 99 distros(!!), and was hooked. I must have tried them all.
Eventually, i settled on Ubuntu, LTS releases. Everything just worked, and so much software was available. I am not a gamer, i just need a super stable and secure machine. Finally Nvidia drivers got better and better.
Instead of buying a machine every 24-36 months, i use custom builds and get 6-8 years of joy. Instead of rebooting every night, i reboot every 6-10 weeks. And native Docker is icing on the cake.
Glad there are other happy Linux desktop users out there. Be sure to support your favorite software vendors when they make their software available for Linux. If the software is free, sponsor them, it's way cheaper than an Adobe subscription. If they charge, pay them, they deserve it.
Yes!!! Exactly šÆ
One thing that's still left on my TODO list as a developer is Arch Linux. I heard a lot of good things about it and my colleague says that the best part about it is that, while installing the OS, you really learn how it works. Think I'm going to try in a VM first, don't wanna mess up my Windows/Ubuntu dual boot setup just yet :D
So, if you know how to install Arch: a tutorial would be very welcome :D
Funny you should ask! ;) dev.to/jimmymcbride/hitchhikers-gu...
Oh wow, seems like you have an article for everything! š
Shtap it! ;p I try and do one article a day. I've play a lot with Arch in the past (Manjaro main while testing and learning Arch and tiling managers). But I recently swapped and went all in and homies in my discord where like, "You should make some content about it" to which I responded "everyone and their mom has made a Arch Install guide" and they made some good counter points, and it got me thinking. Arch Wiki is the best guide. Following a YouTube vid to learn arch install is slow and kinda sucks, the offical written guide is way better. But some things are unclear, or you have to dive through some links and read to figure out what the right command for you are. other things are concepts someone brand new will have trouble understanding, so I can offer my perspective and knowledge to help explain things like partitions and all that. So it's basically a guide through the wiki with me exlpaining stuff along the way.
It's also a future resource for me. Instead of going to the arch wiki directly I can go to this article and follow the step-by-step guide with all the commands right there to copy.
So true which is you wrote about Ownership and Freedom! I like this arguing.
My experience of linux a bit diffrent. My home computer is my favorite MacBook Pro M1 with touch bar - which I don't understand why no popular. - but that is another topic. So I am a bit familiar with unix like commands.
In my works - windows laptop - a last year we have a option: work on VDI windows or VDI linux. So with my MacOS experience and on windows always use gitbash as terminal so I think maybe the linux is good enough for work.
And this is a 100% true. Fare better than windows, even througth VDI the intercation is slower than usual, but with a right workspaces setup this problem is eliminated.
The best of linux is the terminal where you can work much more efficent vs graphic interface heavy application. I was set the history to 100.000 to do not forget which I used, and that why:
give a
h zipfor example show how zip cli parameters are works. ( rg -> rip grep )the other secret weapon is zoxide to hyperjump to a right folder.
Bonus: much cleaner work with docker and cloud system, where the easiest option is select a right linux distro for build.
For a modern Linux distro to work with docker and cloud systems, try [(projectbluefin.io/)]
As a fellow Linux user, I fully agree with everything you said. It's nice having full ownership of your machine. What distro are you running?
Thanks! I started off with Manjaro w/ Gnome for a very long time, did some playing around with many others, but now I'm just running vanilla Arch with Hyprland like a filthy meta slave. Haha
Lol that's understandable. I started with Ubuntu using Gnome a year ish ago, but now I'm using Arch with i3.
I have a friend who loves i3. He's a total Linux chad and I learned a lot from him! :)
What about you? What's your main distro of choice?
Arch Linux as well!
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Linux sure give you soo much freedom which can be overwhelming at first, but then you take it all in slowly, there and there you eventually get comfortable with it.
Then you reach a point where distros don't even matter anymore š .
Yup! The are minor differences, but the biggest ones are rolling/fixed release (HUGE fan of rolling releases for desktop), and what you call the package manager. Some a little more up-to-date than others. I prefer the more up-to-date side, but that's not for everyone. But yeah, they are all incredibly similar haha
For me, I have almost an entire career of familiarity with the combination of UNIX and Linux systems. My first UNIX system that I regularly used dates back to 1982; I heard about Linux on newsgroups as far back as the 1992-1993 timeframe, though I didn't get my hands on one to experiment with on my personal time until the Fall of 1995. Ever since then, Linux has been my favorite system for personal use.
Not long before my retirement in 2018 I had at least two opportunities to use a combination of UNIX and Linux systems on the job too and that was enjoyable, since it's what I've used myself for almost thirty years.
I customize a few scripts and my own login shell (I generally use bash; definitely prefer the sh family of shells and I make my shells easy to modify in case I happen to change shells).
Wow! That's awesome man! I love it when I get the chance to talk to Linux guys who've been a part of it for so long! I worked with lead dev a long time ago that had been a Linux main for a very long time as well. We had such great conversations!
I don't know if any of you are familiar with a guy named Jon "maddog" Hall. Jon has worked as a teacher, marketing professional, book writer and Linux advocate; he brought Linux Torvalds to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late nineties and arranged to get Torvalds a DEC Alphastation so that Linux could be ported to the Alpha computer line.
Jon and I often met at a break nook that had a vending machine, coffee and microwave, where we'd often pop some popcorn and chat about UNIX and Linux.
We also met socially a few times at a nearby seafood restaurant, which also happened to be the place that I privately invited a few friends (Jon included) when I left DEC.
The last time I saw Jon write, he had a column called Maddog's Doghouse in the Linux Magazine. I haven't picked up a copy of that mag in a while, but the article I read was entitled "Early Days of Linux". Several of the things Jon mentioned in the article were similar to many of the conversations between the two of us so I read it with interest, bringing back many positive memories.
Wow! That's really cool! Community is so great. I love it when stuff comes full circle like that. What a history!
I've been using Linux since 2009, around that time I got one of the free Ubuntu CDs and I have not used a windows PC willingly since then. While I am in the Apple eco-system I have replicated most of the "ecosystem" features on my linux desktop, all of them work just as good sans some quality-of-life integrations that are not deal breakers for me. I encourage almost everyone to at least give it a try
Linux does have some pretty good Mac clone features available now! And the desktops workspaces work better! :)
I really like Linux. Though, I am using Macos (MBP) for personal stuff. But for the reasons you mentioned, linux has a special place.
What hardware (pc) do you use?
I used ubuntu distro for a while. When I was using Linux, I had dual booted from a windows machine and probably didn't make the best decisions in swap and os storage (then eventually I had to increase the Linux partition sizes)...
Plus I had much to learn and study (was learning SW development, at nights, sleeping very little, hustling all the time), and therefore I could not spare my time on this...
and it is similar with NeoVim nowadays. I returned back to VS code after using Lazy config... Since you mentioned it, had to tell, it is a really fantastic tool really, but being skilled in it (not the key bindings, it is ok, I am using vim on VSCode, but the configuration and other deep stuff, like Lua, modules etc.) requires time and dedication..
Well, Who knows maybe in the future I can switch to linux and neovim again...
Anyway... It was nice reading this post. Thanks
It's a process! My full swap to Linux took time. Duel booting, making lots of mistakes, but not giving up. I would go back and forth between VS Code and Neovim, learning when I could.
Just keep coming back when you feel motivated too and over time things will all start to fall in place. It's a journey, not a sprint. :)
On Ubuntu from last 16 years and never looked back
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Thank your for sharing, great article!
I started with Ubuntu during my university years (around 2010), and I have been a huge fan since then.
Do you think I should move to some other distros, or is it OK to stay on Ubuntu? As a webdeveloper guy, it's perfectly fine for me, I love all the tools and the GNOME environment as well, and I have never thought about switching to another distro.
I love Gnome and Ubuntu is a great distro! :) Perfect for everything you need. If you're itching to try something new, but not too new, I recommend checking out Rhino Linux! Rhino is a Ubuntu based distro, but the twist is that it's a rolling release! So instead of having to reinstall your OS each times there's an update, you just update the package manager and your up-to-date! No restart required! :)
It also has an additional package manager installed and the packages are all very up-to-date. Everyone compares it to pacman, it's that good!
But, no. You don't have to switch your distro at all. :)
Hi @jimmymcbride !
Thank you for your comment and the recommendation as weel, I will check on Rhino :)
Let me know what you think about it! If you want to, hop in the discord! Have a lot of Linux people coming in right now too and I'm super active in there. :) Cheers!
After you set it up (and that might take a lot of effort if you have strange hardware like me, a ZenBook Duo Pro) it works and it's stable.
I've used first Mac and then Windows for the past few years and the experience was quite horrible (especially on Windows).
Nice! I'm a big desktop guy. Having a little beater laptop is nice, but I love sitting down at a desk dedicated to my computer and development environment. Plus I like to play around with things like Godot and Blender. It's really nice to have 3 big screens, and a home office space to just get work done. :)
I am proud to be a Linux Users since 2000ās tried MacOS and suffer all the pain of Windows, I still surviving in all companies and luck to not be forced to use nothing else but Linux
I chose the less famous distros always like Slackware, Gentoo and now Arch, suffer all the pain of not be a voice heard in the plans of suppliers like NVidia, my own Bank and all productive applications vendors available to other platforms, but I am surviving and most important happy, like we used to say: Be Happy, Use Linux
The best takeaway from being a Linux User is that I am learning and learning quite a lot, all challenges from pandemic times like remote work, video calls, communication tools, again all products that donāt give a shit for Linuxers made me stronger and help me to learn way more
GNU/Linux is life, is proud and is freedom
YES!!! I love this! Very closely reflects my experience as well. Accept I'm forced to work on a mac as and Android engineer :p
I just Upgraded to Ubuntu 24.04 I like it very much on this Lenovo legion.
Very cool! Ubuntu is a solid distribution!
Very cool article as well! If I ever need to replace my keyboard this going to be my go to! :)
it is a very satisfying feeling when a D.I.Y project goes to plan š