There’s seemingly been a recent uptick in the popularity of Linux lately, and as someone who swapped over nearly three years ago after getting fed up with Windows, running it as my only operating system, I figured it’d be a perfect time to share my story of going full time Fedora Linux.
Reasoning for Switching:
I’m a big fan of Linux, and after Windows 11 couldn’t take the sheer amount of advertisements on a operating system you pay for. With a lot of products, if you aren’t paying for it, you ARE the product; but Microsoft seems to want to have it’s cake and eat it too by forcing you to pay money and then shove the operating system full of ads and a web browser you can’t get rid of (Edge).
In my senior year of college, I started running Linux full time, (running Fedora Linux) mainly to try to learn a skill to help me find a job. It did wind up helping me find both an internship and a full time job out of school, and its been a few years without needing Windows for anything, so I’d say it’s been a success. Thanks to Proton, I can play any video game with similar or better performance than Windows, and I have software for every application I could desire for absolutely free, and open source if I can help it too.
It’s frankly become a mix of both an ethical thing, trying to stick it to Microsoft by saying “enough is enough” and swapping over. I don’t think Linux is ready for the average person to use, but it’s making huge strides.
Every month there seems to be free performance improvements, UI improvements, or just me benefiting from the work of countless open source developers. It feels good, like I am part of a community rather than the consumer of a product I have no say in. I mean, in Windows 11 you can’t even change where the taskbar is anymore. Come on, Microsoft!
Who Should, and Shouldn’t Consider Linux as a Daily Driver
I think the worthwhile of switching to something like Linux is how intimate a relationship you want to have with your computer. As someone who works remotely, and enjoys tinkering on things, I like spending time customizing how my browser, task bar, and everything looks, but also like playing around with the internals to see what I can do to really make the operating system mine.
I think it’d be an apt comparison to someone who’s into cars — you can really squeeze more performance out of them by tinkering around and making them yours, but at the end of the day, it’s just getting you from point A to point B; much like a computer just allows you to do tasks.
If you use a piece of software that isn’t supported on Linux, like most Adobe products, you’re basically out of luck unless you want to try to run it in a virtual machine or via Wine/Bottles, but I hesitate to even mention that to anyone. If you want to switch over, a big part of what you should be considering is if what you want to achieve can be done with software that's comparable, and if not, are you willing to swap? Can you use Kdenlive instead of Premier Pro to edit that video you’re working on? Perhaps Krita instead of Photoshop for drawing?
A fundamental misunderstanding is that swapping your operating system is super easy. I mean, it is, in the sense your browser (which I’d say is where most people do the majority of their tasks) will work flawlessly. Firefox and Chrome and most other browsers are cross-compatible, so that’s not an issue. If you’re into 3D modeling, Blender seemingly preforms better on Linux than Windows, and programmers seem to flock to Linux due to it’s customization. But if you aren’t willing to adjust your software stack, you won’t be having a good time. It’d be like expecting your Steam library to work flawlessly on a Mac. It won’t. (for now) — and that your habits might change as a result.
Concluding Thoughts
I don’t have any real desire to swap back to Windows. With rumors of Windows 12 being another unnecessary update, when Windows 10 still has half of users, it’s hard to argue it has “stability” when Microsoft doesn’t seem to have any clear goals for what it wants in an operating system, as it strips features from the OS. I love customizing my system to my needs, and everything I need Linux (specifically, Fedora Linux) seems to have. I think I’ll be staying for a while.
