Iām going to very carefully poke the hornetās nest here and ask this basic question that I never really explicitly formulated. It seems apt here on Lemmy in particular because people take as a given the superiority of Linux as the starting point of conversations involved computers generally.
Iām not here to refute this, but I am thinking I should interrogate it a bit more. Iāll start with an āaverageā user, to which Iāll have to give some sort of definition.
Imagine somebody with a low to moderate concern about privacy, more than none, but not much more and will happily trade it for useful or enjoyable services. Imagine the use case of a desktop computer for this type of person is productivity software they use at work/school, and occasionally for their own purposes too because theyāre familiar with it. They also like to watch movies, browse the web, and communicate with friends and family using popular free software packages. Security isnāt much of a worry for them, but they do engage in private communication and also banking and will pour a lot of personal information in to the machine in exchange for a lot of useful abilities like paying bills and organising their life.
Now also picture this person is open minded, at least a little and willing to hear you out on the concept of operating systems and of Linux in particular. Is it automatically in such a personās interests to switch to Linux? And is it always a good idea to start with supposition that it is and that the only barrier is hesitancy and ignorance? Would any of their needs actually be better met should they switch? A lot of this discussion tends to devolve in to whether it is or isnāt hard for such a person to use Linux should they make the switch and whether using Linux is inherently more difficult than for example Windows but I think whatās missed here is, assuming itās super easy to switch for an āaverageā user and perfectly easy to operate thereafter, is it actually better in such a case? If the needs are so basic, what has been gained? Is it mostly an ideological preference for the philosophical concepts behind the open source movement? That could be enough in and of itself perhaps, you could pitch Linux as ābetterā within that framework at least for the ideals it promotes. I feel like I sense thereās a desire to push Linux for this reason on the thinking that if just one more person joins the fold so to speak, then it generally pushes the world at large vaguely in the right direction in some small way. But is there anything more tangibly superior for an āaverageā user? It seems like nowadays hardware has long surpassed the needs of users like these such that things like āperformanceā donāt seem all that relevant considering almost any available platform could fulfill these needs so thoroughly that theoretically superior performance from the software would seem not to play a role. There is the security and privacy aspect, certainly for me, that definitely puts me off Windows but if an āaverageā user says they donāt care about this things, can you really say theyāre being foolhardy in a practical sense? In a wider view, arguably, in the way that it pushes the world in a generally worse direction, but for them directly in the near to medium or even long term, whatās going to happen if they just donāt even worry about it? People say Windows has poor security, but for the number of people using it, just how many will personally experience actual measurable harm from this? Despite pouring so much personal information in to their computer, I suspect they could likely go a lifetime without experiencing identity theft, or harrassment from authorities, or tangible/financial losses. I suspect they probably know that too. That seems to me again like it really only leaves more of a ādigital veganismā approach to Linuxās virtues. Thatās appealing to some, to me a bit even but itās a much narrower basis for proclaiming it āsuperiorā
Now at the other end of the spectrum, the users that are not the least āaverageā who run Linux on their home systems and probably at work, use open source alternatives for every possible service and do not need conversion as they themselves are Linux preachers. What is it that they typically get out of Linux? Iāve heard many say they enjoy ātinkeringā. I get that, is that the main benefit though? It seems then that the appeal is that itās kind of āhardā, like a puzzle, but I donāt think any of this crowd would like that assessment. What do you want to tinker with though that closed systems would prevent you from doing? This probably goes to the heart of it because itās the point at which I think probably most diverge from say an IT professional or programmer that loves Linux, I am too ignorant here to know what I donāt know and I just canāt really conceive of a scenario where I might for example want to personally modify the kernel of an operating system. Most examples I see if that type of thing is people making hardware work, and itās ingenious and impressive but the hardware is usually that part of the setup thatās not democratised and not open source, itās usually something off the shelf it seems to me that that hardware would have worked already on a more popular platform. Likewise when you eke out of last bit of performance out of a system, what are you actually doing with it? I mean I get that itās a crying shame for hardware to be hobbled by lousy software but if the use for the hardware, the need for computing to be done can be met with existing platforms, what is done with the savings from the better software?
May trigger some folks here by using apt. :)
Iāve been a linux user off-and-on for about ten years. In the last two years, Iāve worked to switch to it exclusively, with the last holdout being my gaming rig that has been Windows-free for 1-1.5 years. I rely on Arch, Debian, and Pop for my daily drivers, but Iām also always trying to suggest that distro doesnāt matter a whole lot, except to simplify setup for certain use cases.
But as to the crux of your question: for me, the appeal comes down to a few different factors.
Freedom
This is the one absolutely everyone says. Itās true in some senses, but not in others. For example, I do have more or less complete freedom over my own hardware if I am using a purely FOSS setup. There is a certain power in that, but moreover, it feels like a necessity ā I paid for the hardware, and am wholly opposed to handing over usage rights to it to some software black box that could be doing things outside of my best interests. Is that tinfoil hat-ty? Yep. But I also do think itās realistic.
Practicality
This might seem out of place given Linuxās history. Itās better known as a tinkererās OS with lesser known procedures and mechanisms than as an easy, practical OS. But Linux has changed by leaps and bounds since its earlier days. Itās no longer difficult to set up (unless you want some crazy shit, but thatās true on the Windows side too and thus can be factored out).
I measure practicality in a few different ways. Does the machine do what I need it to? Does it waste resources doing so? Does it do things I donāt want it to do? Is it hard to do the things I need to do on the machine?
In my own experience, Linux does what I need it to do. It does it without wasting as many resources as Windows (I was still on an i7 4790k until last week, because it was plenty ā I only upgraded for gaming performance). It doesnāt do things I donāt ask it to, and even if it did, I could adjust it.
The common annoyance of Windows Update being constantly in your face is a thing. Ads in the start menu. Bloatware. All of those things I donāt want the hardware that I paid for to be doing. All of those things make Windows less practical for daily use.
But what about software support? What if I need something that only runs on Windows? First, these instances are fewer and fewer. Gaming was the biggest of elephants in the room, and frankly, I find Linux gaming superior to Windows now. I can run DX12 games and pre-cache the shaders, causing less stutter in general as a result. For AMD, the graphics drivers are in the Linux kernel ā never do I need to worry about manual video driver installs again. Yes, some games do not perform as well through Proton ā but some perform at parity and others run better than on Windows.
There are some clear examples of software with no real Linux alternative, e.g. Adobe suite: You could use GIMP instead of Photoshop for many tasks, but not all. You could opt for Inkscape instead of Illustrator, except it doesnāt support CMYK and some other features. Need Premiere? Then you probably actually need Premiere. There isnāt really a good way to run the Windows versions (unless they now work in WINE or even Proton ā I havenāt looked into it in some time), so if you need them, you may be SOL. But many people do not need them, myself included, and the alternatives work great for the limited use cases I have elsewhere.
The new reliance on web apps for so many things has been an obvious boon for Linux. You can have the same browser experience but without the extra overhead in the back.
All of this adds up, in my view, to an experience that is superior on the Linux side, and thus I stick with it.
Community
Believe it or not, this is a big one. Stereotypes aside, the Linux community (and FOSS community) in general is amazing to be a part of. You usually donāt see people discussing the finer points of Windows outside of corporate events. But Linux still rides that line between hobby and necessity. The community is one of the things that keeps computing fun, but at this point Windows just feels like the soulless. corporate option. In contrast, for as stable and easy as modern Linux can be, it can also still be a tinkererās playground at heart.
All of these things taken together ā the freedom, the practicality, keeping the fun in computing ā make Linux an obvious choice in my opinion. I really have not looked back.