Linux is too good for us
How many of you have really used Linux ? If you look at the marketshare of operation systems of the PCs over the last few years, you will see that Windows totally dominated the market and it been that way since it came on the scene on 1985.
In January 2019, Windows had over 71% marketshare, Apple’s Mac OS with 18.3% of the marketshare and Linux OS with only 1.7% (1) by March 2020. We won’t discuss neither Windows or Mac OS history, because you might already know it, loved Win XP, hated Vista and probably used Win 8 for just a month and returned to Win 7, but when Win10 is released, Microsoft said :
Windows 10 Takes Its Place as Microsoft’s ‘Forever OS' (2)
The point is: Using Windows is, for most of us, is like opening a window in your house, it’s the familiarity and the fact that it comes pre-installed that made us ask ourselves why bother changing it.
Origins, OS by the people for the people
For those who does not know what Linux is, you can just go to the Linux official website and the company answers that for you, i did the research for you :
You probably use Linux but you dont know about it.. in your phones, cars, refrigerators and it runs most of the internet, also running super computers making the scientific breakthroughs and the world stock-exchanges..
Add the GNU (3) softwares to it and it becomes another Operation system for your PC, we wont dig for more technical terms to make this story more smooth and comprehensive for everyone.
Get this, Linux was the engineers favorite jungle, but now it’s more simple and user friendly that anyone, ANYONE can use it, and absolutely free, we mean by that you have the ultimate FREEDOM to install and use it, modify, copy and distribute also free of charges.
The next point to discuss is that Linux is distributed in an open source licence, and most of its softwares are based on GNU Public License which makes it totally Free as we mentioned above. Being open sourced and maintained by a group of developers called “communities” who are people, volunteers in most of the cases, repairing bugs and fixing issues in Linux Kernel.
So, imagine you’r onto a windows feature and you’re thinking “Oh i can change this to make better for me !” Linux lets you do this and redistribute it for others, and that’s the core concept of its Freedom.
Windows reached their limits, Linux just started
Microsoft’s confession that they wont build another OS for at least the next 8 years, is a good proof that their OS can’t scale over time. Linux tho is becoming more friendly for normal users, very efficient for programmers and system admins and specially more mature.
Less vulnerable
Who had viruses before ? Or some hard-to-remove malware ? The obvious answer is almost everyone. The notorious WannaCry virus hits over 230.000 Windows PCs on 2017 in just one day(4) confirms Avast. This particular virus made, not only individuals reconsider their cyber security precautions, but also governments.
Linux in second hand, doesn’t get affected to the point that you don’t even have to install an antivirus in it. So, we can actually say that Linux is 99% safe thanks to the way it was designed.
Portability
Linux redefine the word “Portability” : Newest versions of Linux can be installed on your oldest piece of hardware. GNU Linux Operation systems requires less hardware resources than Mac OS and Windows by far. In fact, there are some Linux distributions that are mainly designed to be installed on you 512 Mb of ram PC bringing it back from the death.
We talked about “distributions” which means different types, flavors and versions of GNU Linux, check DistroWatch for the most popular distributions, it can be a bit not accurate because we dont have exact number of users for each distribution, but it helps.
Credibility and Privacy
As we know by know, Linux is open source software. It means that people can actually see how it was made and specially how it runs. Which prevent any company from stealing personal date, gathering informations about users or violate your privacy. Linux users are very sensitive in this matter, some of them never accept any such acts to their personal space and instantly change the distribution once they find a violation.
That’s why companies that makes GNU Linux distros cannot spy on you for their sake, and if that happens, you will hear about it. Which gives Linux the credibility prize over other operation systems existing.
Reliability
Nowadays, Linux is perfect for programmers thanks to its flexibility managing every Programming language and compiling never been faster.
Graphical User Interfaces, known as GUI, can now replace almost everything people used to do before with Terminal-only. Like updating OS and softwares, navigating through directories, copy-pasting ..
Gaming also enters the Linux world by Steam plateforme, now you can play you favorite games using Steam, and if that is not enough for you, CodeWeavers also provides some solutions to run windows-only games into linux, and if you can’t find your game, Use WINE ( Wine Is Not Emulator) to run .exe installers into you Linux without any Virtual machines and get the real game experience.
Web services and clouding management rocks, over 90% of the public cloud workload runs on Linux servers (5).
Github stops counting the number of people contributing to Linux kernel and shows and infinity symbol instead, which proves that Linux is being more mature year after the other.
A vast of trusted Free Software powered by GNU Licenses and other permissive Licenses makes the Linux stores full of useful and trust worthy tools.
Enough numbers, What people actually say about it
The most popular comment on one Reddit thread was :
At the end of the day.. The Linux community wants to make software, while Microsoft wants to make money.
In fact a lot of the people who now using Linux say that they are very happy they made the change, and mostly for the reasons we have talked about today.
Other People reactions on twitter :
No updates bothering you, it’s faster, no spyware running in the background, tans of variety.. and Penguins, i like Penguins.
It’s free ! As in freedom, no stupid licence to tells you can’t use your computer the way you want to, you’re free to use it for any purpose, change it and redistribue the changes you make, it’s software useful for society.
Conclusion
With all these positivity being spoke about Linux, why its marketshare is not even 2% ? Linux should be ascending faster then it is, but one developer said that Linux is far too fragmented and not centralized for one exclusive company which makes it so hard to fight Microsoft and Apple’s Public Relations machines. But combining the communities together, you will find great potential for a modern people’s Operation System.
Also, Linux was for a long time, the fav OS for people who knows what they’re doing on PCs. Not ordinary users, that changes now and we expect to increase the number of Linux users in the future.
Linux may be too good for us now, by i am sure, it is the future of PC Operation systems.
Bibliography:
(1) : StarCounter OS Marketshare
(3): GNU — Wiki ** GNU — Official website
(5): CBTNuggets Blog — Why Linux runs 90 percent of the public cloud workload
